The use of remote video assistants is becoming prevalent in the financial institution/banking world, as well as other customer service environments, such as health care, retail, utilities, communications and the like. Remote video assistants are accessible through dedicated Automated Teller Assist (ATA) machines/devices, which may be located within a business, such as a financial institution/banking center or may be located at any other convenient location. Additionally, remote video assistants may be accessible via a user's device, such as a personal computer, laptop computer, touch pad device, mobile communication device, such as a smart phone, or the like.
In convention video assistance systems, multimedia services may be delivered by a single multimedia vendor/application that implements specific delivery protocols. Such use of specific multimedia vendors/application within the systems requires tight integration (i.e., software and protocol compatibility) between the multimedia vendor and the underlining resource allocation infrastructure (i.e., the infrastructure for assigning video assistants to users and managing the video assistant sessions).
Therefore, a need exists to develop systems, apparatus, computer program products, methods and the like that take a multimedia “vendor-agnostic” approach to the delivery of video assistance services. In this regard, an over-the-top application is desired that will allow for the delivery of video assistance regardless of which multimedia vendor/client is implemented by the user and/or the video assistants. As such, the desired system should be protocol and media client agnostic, meaning that video assistance services can be delivered regardless of which type of communication protocol is implemented by the specific media client/vendor that delivers the services. In addition the desired system should support any backend infrastructure service provided by or supported by the video assistance system regardless of communication protocol or the like. Moreover, the desired system should act as a video session broker to streamline call workflow and maintain the presence of all active user endpoints/computing platforms. Further, the desired systems should act as a coordinator for initiating video session requests and maintain messaging transport that seamlessly pass requisite parameters and action triggers to users and video assistants.